2-healing. That notion has reared its ugly head with enrage timers. It’s only worked once, on Baleroc, with a very specific composition.
I hate the idea of 2-healing. To me, it feels like a penalty for doing well. We’re finally able to handle the encounter without shitshitshitshitohshit moments, without running oom halfway through, without randomly losing people, and suddenly it’s time to take a member of our team away, so we can beat the enrage timer.
Oh. Hell. No.
I really don’t want to create an us-versus-them mentality with the DPS. I really don’t. But when they try to take a member of Team Heal, it makes my blood boil. I know, I know, it’s not Team Heal versus Team DPS. It’s just Raid Team. And we should do everything we can to benefit Raid Team, right?
So, tell me, dear raiding healers, how do you feel about this 2-healing thing? Do you use it for certain encounters? If so, what is the rationale?
I have conflicting thoughts on 2-healing. On one hand, I think it’s a lot of fun to do. Once you’ve killed a boss so many times people (hopefully) get better al avoiding unneccessary damage and healers get better at responding to the unavoidable damage. So 3 healing (or 6 or 7 healing in the case of 25s) can get a bit boring. Dropping a healer makes things more challenging and more exicing again.
On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of dropping healers just because you’ve gotten better at a fight or need extra dps. If a healer enjoys going dps I’m all for it, but if they’re not really into it, or if they end up getting replaced by a dps it’s not really fair to them.
As a DPS I have to say PHHHHFFFFBBBT! Suck it up buttercup!
We’re two healing most of the fights except Beth’tilac, Staghelm and Ragnaros (which we’re working on now).
Beth’tilac because the final phase gets to be healing intensive, Staghelm because we need the extra AE heals for scorp phase and Ragnaros because.. well, it’s a bit of a nightmare and we’re still learning it.
Though to be fair, if you’re hitting enrage timers with three healers, the fault rests on the DPS. Your DPS should be able to put up the numbers required to kill stuff with three healers. Moving to two heals makes sense when you can comfortably do it – it’s not a solution for bad DPS – especially if they’re dying and that’s causing them to not hit the numbers needed? If’ they’re surviving but not putting up the numbers and healers are getting bored, it could be the right answer.
I don’t like the idea that as healers get better and more competent they cannibalize their own raid spots. When we got the one Baleroc kill that way, I was concerned that 2-healing would become a standard “what we do when we’re wiping too much” solution, and I don’t like the feeling that there might be less spots to go around.
Also, it’s no secret that I don’t like to DPS. I mean, I’m fine doing BH or a farm fight or something as DPS and will even volunteer for it. But I HATE being in a high stress DPS role or being thrust into one when I DON’T volunteer.
Usually, in my experience, the problem isn’t two-healing per se, it’s how the implied message of “our DPS seems to be too low for the normal strat, so instead of prodding the DPS to work harder we’ll make our healers carry the burden instead” is received. The default response of leadership should always be to address the cause of the problem, not the symptom; sort out the problems with the DPS first. Sometimes it feels like people throw numbers at the problem instead.
If you really can’t do anything in the DPS department, people are being coached and aren’t improving, and assuming that the vast majority of raids really don’t two-heal the encounter or it’s unreasonable to ask that of you, then there are some difficult questions to be asked about how you value progression vs personalities. The alternative may be benching or replacing particular DPS players who aren’t up to scratch, which might be less palatable to a raid team than asking the healers to do a bit more work.
I think it comes down to how the proposal is framed and the relationships between the players. I’d be more willing to take on more work if it means someone I value in game doesn’t get bumped, but if I feel I’m carrying slack DPS then I’m less thrilled at the prospect.
I totally agree. I feel like if OUR team has improved to the point where we can get by with 2 healers, their team should have improved to the point where they can get by with 5 dps. If not, it seems like the improvement is unbalanced. (Granted, there are SOME encounters where you have to 2-heal, but not very many.)
We don’t switch to two healing unless we have the encounter down. The only exception to this (in the Firelands) was Alysrazor. We learned this fight with 2 healers (our 3rd healer had to go bear & we didn’t have a replacement healer). Now we 2 heal everything except Balroc (he is going 2 heals this week), Domo and Rag.
As it has been mentioned before, if you guys are pushing enrage timers, it is a dps issue. The change needs to be made there. If your dps ARE putting out the required numbers and you still aren’t beating the enrage (which can happen I suppose) then cutting down on a healer might be your only option.
I know that our raid team views it as a challlenge and looks forward to us 2 healing fights. They look at it as a way to better themselves.
Hah … believe it or not, until I joined up with the Effers, I thought 2-healing was the norm. My old guild went all the way through ICC two-healing (except that green dragon boss, whatsherface).
When I encountered three-healing in EtI I realized that there might have been a reason I burned out on healing
We did too, Grimm. That’s one reason I am really hesitant to 2 heal anything, because I don’t want to go back to that model.
I like starting with 3 healing and going to 2 healing as we gear up – if we keep 3 healing after the content goes on farm, then it tends to become ridiculously easy, we heal less and get sloppy. I would rather switch to 2 healing things so that I keep my skills honed – we don’t get better as healers by slacking off!
Actually, 3 healing “easy” stuff gives us the chance to practice mana conservation techniques, or test out different “rotations.” I tend to try unconventional things that I would not try during a true RAID during a 3-heal farm night.
The number of healers I bring to an encounter (bearing in mind it’s a 25-man encounter) is based on:
- overall lineup: Do I have the healers online that I want to bring in? I ended up 5-healing Rag attempts one night because we literally had 5 healers online. I ended up sticking with that for subsequent attempts because we could definitely heal through any avoidable damage with “just” five healers, and were able to pop 2 healer CDs during all three molten seeds, too.
- Is switching out a healer for a DPS going to eat up any time we saved by killing the boss ~40 seconds faster? Am I going to need another healer again for the next fight? If that’s the case, I’ll 6-heal (what we normally do) and just keep the lineup intact, probably, based on the upcoming fights.
- Do healers need loot? We try hard to make sure people are in for their loot when we do bosses, so I try to make sure people with higher EP priority (we use EPGP) are in for bosses they need.
- Are we hitting enrage? If we’re hitting enrage, I have to drop a healer, assuming the DPS are all doing their jobs appropriately.
I, much like you, prefer to stomp over things with 6-7 healers. I’ve made a conscious effort to stay with 6 for just about every fight, except 7 for Majordomo and 5 for Ragnaros, and not bulk up to 7 for a lot of fights.
The difference between 2 and 3 healers is more pronounced than, for example, the difference between 5 and 6. If we were running 25′s, we probably wouldn’t even be having this issue, as one extra DPS would not make or break an encounter.
On 25s, one DPS absolutely can make or break an encounter if you’re reaching enrage. By that same token, one healer can make or break the encounter if people are dying to unavoidable damage (Flame Scythes on Majordomo, for example). 2 healers and 3 healers is basically the difference between 5 healers and 7 healers. I have the ability to bring in 6 healers for most fights, which is roughly 2.5 healers in a 10-man, and that’s a balance that works for me and my group. Most of the time, 6 healers is enough to be challenging for the healers but doesn’t allow the DPS to slack off too much.
A 25-man group certainly allows for more options of all kinds, including being able to take the 10-man equivalent of “2.5″ healers to a raid. It’s one of the reasons I love the format so much.
I prefer three healers. It gives us a lot of ability to push fights farther, recover from a single mistake, etc. And we healers came as healers. Yes, for the good of the raid we can switch to DPS and should be willing to but darn it, that’s not why I raid.
That said the other night we were one healer down, couldn’t get a replacement from guild, and finally brought in someone whose healer was saved to Shannox and Ryolith – so my paladin partner and I two healed those. And we one shot both fights. Could do it again, too, but mostly we don’t need to. All our dps are really stepping up and getting better every single week, so dps is becoming less of an issue.
We initially tried two healing Alysrazor because our dps was a little low, but that just resulted in wipes. So we switched to three heals, asked the dps to step it up – and got our first kill on her, and a repeat kill this week.
For the good of the raid I’m willing to switch – but if the raid is willing to collectively step up and everyone improve a little bit, here and there, that’s even better.
Two-healing is a luxury for when a fight doesn’t require much healing (Argaloth) or to challenge you do when a fight is boring (Magmaw, post-nerf). Not an option because you need the extra DPS to beat the enrage. First of all, it’s dodging the real problem, that of DPS not meeting the required levels of performance. Secondly, you’re punishing the group who ARE performing well by taking away their raid spots or desired roles. It’s one thing to lolDPS on Argaloth because it’s “just” a Vault fight, but it’s quite another to expect someone to step into a raid DPS spot and push the faltering DPS levels to an acceptable level.
3-healing is not the one true way. There are plenty of fights where you can beat it with less gear and less skill if you stray from the usual 2+3+5 composition. Baleroc is an example in current content where, if you drop a healer or a tank, you can beat him with less gear. Back in ICC, Saurfang was 2-healable at significantly less gear than he’s 3-healable. And of course Valythria is much easier if you use 4-5 healers.
That said, I’ve never been in a raid where all the healers are dead set on healing, nor where all the tanks are dead set on tanking. It would certainly complicate things if you had to really twist arms to get someone to change roles.
If the prevailing strat guides say 2-healing is the way to go, like with Saurfang, then so be it. If the guides suggest a 3-healer setup, generally 2-healing that encounter is the suck, at least until it’s on farm.
I think our heal team has a bit of a different mind-set as we often request to reduce our healing team from 3 to 2 (and we’ve done many fights singly in T11 normal raids since T12 came out). I suppose we’re a bunch of masochists and really enjoy having our healing bars running dry.
I really do enjoy healing, but I hate standing around for an encounter doing nothing but popping a Rejuvenation now and then. I’d rather be a lackluster dps and actively involved in the encounter past avoiding bad stuff and pretending that I’m busy.
It also depends heavily on the heroic encounter of the fight. If we’re going to be 2-healing a heroic, we darn well better be comfortable 2-healing it on normal. There isn’t any specific fight that had such a tight dps check that we ever needed to drop to 2-heals for a normal-mode encounter thus far, but there have been heroic fights where having that extra dps made the difference between a kill and a wipe.
All *that* being said, it really depends on your guild’s goals and expectations. I knew when I joined this guild I was expected to have a somewhat comparable dps specialization and would be the primary “go-to” for dps. The other healers are also quite clear on this. I don’t see how dropping a healer in favor of a particular encounter is any different from going to a single tank strategy in that otherwise that player is often not contributing in any *meaningful* way because there just isn’t enough stuff to be tanked/people who need healing.
However, if your guild culture/recruitment/expectation is that players have a single specialization/job then I’m more uncomfortable with the dropping healers for dps rule because as you progress further into the content more fights are designed with a 2-healing model in mind, or players just get better at avoiding the bad. Penalizing solid, dependable players with a variable schedule just as you reach the challenging content is a *major* drag.
My guild is currently discussing this very problem. Almost any heroic fight in Firelands can be done on 2 healers (Beth’tilac being the exception I can think of) and it has meant having to choose between our 3 healers for most fights. So far it hasn’t been an issue, we healers have been able to decide who goes out without any drama. But now that we’re going on Ragnaros hc, people are discussing whether we should rotate healers at all, or just put all our focus on two, basically leaving the third (which apparently seems to be me) completely left out of the fight. Needless to say I am not very fond of the idea…
We recently changed from 3-man to 2-man healing in Fireland 10man and 10man heroics. I must admit I LOVE 2healing Baloroc (normal difficulty of course) as I feel very important and I know I MUST not fail! Everything must be timed perfectly and the 30k hps reward in the end
For me personally it is more of a challenge now. Though it’s sad that our best resto druid had to spec lazerchicken
So, it’s been a long while since I raid healed. Stubborn, in fact, was the last raid healer I played back in LK, so my views are going to be general and not boss-specific. Take them, as you always should, worth a grain of salt.
That said, it’s life. If you want work done, give it to a busy person. Those of us who work hard at our jobs so that we feel good about ourselves and earn the respect of our peers are only digging ourselves in deeper. That’s the oxymoronic nature of being good; it usually ends up being bad for you.
If you’re truly good enough to 3 heal without breaking a sweat, then you should two heal. I don’t know about raid comps and what is or is not feasible. Obviously if 2 healing is truly impossible then it’s not worth bothering. However, if you hit that right raid comp again; if everyone improves their play a little more; if you feel like pushing your limits instead of sitting on a plateau, then you should do it.
It is more work. It is “punishment” for success. It is also a game, and games’ purposes are to be challenging, not to make us feel good about your play in a virtual world. Note, that’s not a dig at you Zel, or any particular person. It’s a dig at WoW, really; or at least at finite game challenges. If you master your role in an encounter, the only way to keep improving is to take away some of your support.
It happened to me back in Wrath in ICC heroics. We went from 3 healing to 2 healing, and it was a pain in the rear. It did make me a better healer, though, something that I took with me forward into 4.0 and was able to use then and there. If we hadn’t pushed, I wouldn’t have had that.
Like I said, it seems from your and Lono’s post that it’s simply not a possibility right now. When it is, though, I hope you give it a shot, gritting your teeth, knowing about the suckage that’s coming, but also knowing the improvement in skill will be well worth it.
To you, maybe, but not to everyone. People play games for many different reasons, one of them being to make themselves feel good about their play, however that may be accomplished.
Evolutionarily, no. We play to learn. Our brain learns through pattern recognition, and play helps us learn patterns that we might not otherwise have access to due to age, location, or, well, reality (i.e. being a hero).
We have very complicated brain chemical feedback systems to reward us from learning, and we summarize these systems in various ways; pain, boredom, and fun.
I’m oversimplifying here, but fun comes from learning new things and working to master them. If you’ve mastered them, then it’s not fun anymore; it’s something else. There’s a slew of things it can be, but it’s not fun, and you’re not playing. So unless you’re challenged, you’re not playing and the activity you’re not playing is not a game.
I only brought up all this because I saw on Kurn’s excellent site a question about whether or not WoW is a game, and I think that to some it is and to others it’s not, so this is really part of a larger debate.
Feel free to disagree, but you’ll have to take it up with the research. You can start with A Theory of Fun by Raph Koster if you’d like; it’s the most accessible text. If you’re more hardcore than that (I don’t know; you may literally be a rocket scientist), try A General Theory of Love by Lewis, Amini,and Lannon. It’s a bit more dense but also has a lot more data in it.
If this is just an argument about semantics and you don’t like how I’m using the word “play,” (which is only as defined as above), that’s fine, too. I’m meaning it that specifically, though, so your usage may be more general, which is fine, but then we’re not really disagreeing. You mean that people do things that are self affirming, which is of course true, and I’m just saying that those behaviors are neither play nor fun.
I apologize if you weren’t looking for so much un-fun information. Like a joke, dissecting this stuff makes it rather terrible. Sorry, again, just defending my point.
My point was that games are something we ‘do’ in our leisure time, and as such, their purpose is not universally to be challenging, the same was people don’t just read books or watch films to be challenged. Sure, a book or film (or piece of music or whatever) you can really get your teeth into, and that makes you think or challenges your views on life is a wonderful thing, but it’s not ‘entertainment’ the way most people understand that word.
And yes, your use of ‘play’ and ‘fun’ are very specific, which is fine but you have to make it clear you’re using them as such before making such apparently sweeping generalisations. I don’t disagree with the point of your post, when using those specific definitions of ‘play’ and ‘fun’, all I’m saying is there is more to a game like WoW than the purely mechanical challenge of it.
Even a game like chess can have a lot more meaning to it than ‘play’ and ‘fun’, if you’re playing against an old friend, for instance, or it’s a regular part of your week and you enjoy the time spent away from a stressful job.
I’d challenge you to come up with a specific list of reasons people “play” “games” and then show how comfortably healing when more challenging options are available fits into any of them.
I’m sure there are some – I can think of one myself, “I play to accumulate gear,” but really, then, why heal? It’s a high-stress job, and dps can get gear, too, sometimes just as easily (if it’s a rarer dps armor class in your guild).
I think probably the specifics of this case are pretty common, but that other than “It cannot be done,” which Zel has said, and I wouldn’t dare dispute her point of view about her healing situation in her guild, I can’t really think of a specific reason to give yourself challenging job that eventually has no challenge.
Socialization is out; you don’t have to raid to socialize. Achievement (in the literal sense, not the game sense) is out, as there are other things to achieve. Entertainment is out, as things that entertain us engage us, and doing a rote healing assignment with no challenge isn’t engaging (hence sleep-healing through dungeons, which I’ve done plenty). Provoking thought is out, as if you’re not challenged you’re not being forced to think. Killing time? I guess that’s a reason, but I don’t think that’s why most people raid. Habit, I guess, but once again, I’m not sure that’s a healthy reason to raid.
All that said, I don’t dispute your point that we come to WoW, which may or may not be a game, and certainly isn’t to some – it’s a job, hobby, meeting place- but not a game, for a variety of reasons. But to take up the healing gauntlet and then say you don’t want a challenge seems illogical. Once again, this isn’t to question Zel’s position, just to defend my point that when it is an option to continue a challenge, I can’t think of reason not to.
Also, I really like the tone of this dialogue. Too often people who disagree get nasty, and neither of us have done that (at least I don’t think I have; I know you haven’t).
I think when we start being able to comfortable beat the enrage timer, we should drop down to 4 dps. So they don’t get bored and can push the limits of their skills. (Nobody does that, but really, why not?)
Actually, they used to encourage that with achievements for beating bosses with 80% capacity, so actually, they did encourage that. Why they dropped that type of achievement, I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean you can’t impose challenges on yourself.
@Zel: Because DPS makes the fight end quicker? And a lot of DPS don’t really have other options (Mages, Rogues or Hunters). The alternative for some DPS classes isn’t healing or tanking.. it’d be sitting there with their finger up their nose (as opposed to face on keyboard).
@Stubbie: We did actually drop DPS for an extra tank for some Cata achievements – Halfus comes to mind.
“And a lot of DPS don’t really have other options”.
ZOMG L2Bandage noobs!
I’m holding out on the bandages for two reasons:
1. I’m trying to convince Blizzard to given Engineers a “Potion Launcher” so we can fire healing potions at allies.
2. I need them for PUGs where the healers neglect the guy doing 50% of the party damage.
Hmmmm…..
I smell the nead for
My computer is screwing with me. >:(
Ok, what I was saying was:
I smell the need for MORE HUNTER MQoSDPS! Bring on the Pew Pew with loads of less QQ.
Now, I shall go hide behind a rock from any indignation of Team Heals!
<3 U
Z/Caligan
Hunters cry over Baleroc’s Shard of Torment usually being placed at the feet of melee, thereby meaning to be part of the shard soaking rotation, the hunter has to put Baleroc into their min-range dead zone.
Okay, not all hunters cry, I do.
I hear a lot of other guilds exclude hunters from that rotation.
Clearly the answer is to bring 3 healers, 6 dps, and only one tank. Everyone is happy! Except the tanks maybe, but do they have a blog?
(Incidentally, that is the setup with which we do Baleroc actually.)
The decimates become REALLY hard to heal as the stacks go up. Although if we are beating the enrage timer significantly, it will be negligible.
Here’s an alternative: try 1-tanking Baleroc
We’ve only killed him once, but it was on our …er sixth attempt, or thereabouts. With three healers we used passive healing (hots, beacon) on the tank for as long as possible while the healers gathered stacks. We designated one healer (with decent output and plenty of fast/instant heals) to stay on the raid and build stacks of the buff at the start while the other two tank healed when the damage increased past the point where hots/beacon was enough, and used heroism then too. When the third healer took on the full-time tank healing role he had *loads* of stacks. From then on, he stayed on the tank, and the other two healers switched as required to help out. With 6 dps doing a great job of managing the shard-things, it was quite doable.
Gah. And if I’d read Shintar’s comment first, I could have just said “us too” instead.
How are you being punished? Last I checked, the goal was to kill bosses. You have imposed a social type expectation for your “Team Heals”, but even as a healer I’d argue that killing a boss is > someone sitting out. If you’re not willing to sit to facilitate a kill (doesn’t matter who you are), then you’re showing you’re in it for you, not the group. That’s fine if that’s the guild environment you have, where getting kills is secondary to having a good time (and honestly, at this point in the tier, that’s where I’m at) – but you’re not being punished. I stand by my original opinion that all of T12 normal was intended to be 2 healed in the first place.
Have you considered that you’re punishing Team DPS because you need to bring 3 healers?
We are not yet to the point where 2-healing is an option, mostly because people still stand in stuff, tanks are not quite solid on gear, etc (for example, one of our main tanks was out of game for almost 4 weeks due to moving and was unable to grind gear during that time.)
Now, I think on certain (limited) encounters, we could 2-heal it. However, we would have to have the right group makeup to do that. For example, on Baleroc, we’d have to exclude the druid healer and use 2 single-target “tank turrets”. To me, that feels like “bring the class, not the player” since a druid healer would be TERRIBLY useful on other fights such as Beth’tilac.
Re: swapping. Swapping players in and out per encounter is not really part of our guild culture, as we are casual. I don’t think anyone would say “I refuse to sit out, you’ll just have to wipe.” It’s not really a tension between the raid and the individuals.
Re: off-specs. Yes, we could rotate in healers with off-specs. The problem with that is… again, casual guild. Most of our off-spec gear sets are not appropriate for T-12.
Re: Punishing Team DPS. I’d like to punish them by bringing 4 healers. They are such jerks.
“I’d like to punish them by bringing 4 healers. They are such jerks.”
Yes, putting up with 4 healers would be quite a horrible punishment. That is what you meant there, right?
It’s good to see you guys stick to your guns and keeping on being what you want to be. Really, so long as you’re having fun, you guys are winning at raiding.
You have to do the right things for the right reasons. If your raid team has a healer that can crank out some good DPS and is ok with swapping… and you have two other healers that can really hold the fort down then you have two healing as an optional strategy as needed or as desired.
Punished for getting good? I disagree. DPS don’t get to slack if the fight starts to get easy. I mean then CAN… but the leadership can still call them out for it. But if the healing gets easy who is going to complain that the healers are not overhealing? That makes no sense. If your group wants a challenge then go for it.
But if two healing to make up for weak DPS is a very dangerous proposition. It is the case, as several here have said, of attacking the symptom but not the problem. For a raid to succeed they need to be able to identify problems correctly and solve them. If 2 healing will let you get a boss down, great. But if you don’t ALSO address the DPS issue then you are not doing yourself a favor in the long run. No one likes to feel like they are carrying the group… No wait… I do… never mind.
Incidentally we 1 tanked Balroc from our first try and have never looked back. Bear with some on-use dodge trinkets and it is pretty easy to 9 dps it while 3 healing. My advice is to put on two dodge trinkets and 1 tank it.
We are contemplating one-tanking. We’ve tried it in the past and it didn’t go particularly well. We don’t have a tank with SERIOUS avoidance, but we might be able to get one of our tanks to reforge the crap out of his stuff for that one fight. (We also don’t have a bear…)
I wanted to add that if the “more dps” solution is to sit a healer and bring in someone else rather than having the healer switch to dps, that is crap. Your raid is casual enough not to play minmax games like that. Yes, one night on Baleroc we sat our off tank and brought in our backup raider for that kill but we also told the off tank what to do to make sure that never happened again ( crack 11k dps). And since then he fixed his problem, got a dps off spec that worked, and we’ve downed Baleroc every week.
Sitting someone from heals regularly because the dps can’t get with it sounds like a great way to cause raid drama, us Vs them nonsense an all the other stuff you Effers seem to have come together to avoid
I don’t actually have a dps offset. I have holy/disc for the “greater good” of the raid. I frequently swap between the two during a raid night. That further constrains our options for one of the healers going DPS.
And it probably makes life harder for you on occasion, doesn’t it? Because you can’t quest, or do much dps at all supposing you’d want to. So the idea that you might get asked to sit after already sacrificing for the raid is really annoying.
In our raid, we all three have dps off specs but nobody should ask me or our holy pally to dps. Just don’t. And our disc priest is nothing to write home about when she goes shadow, heck, I think she might do more dps smiting stuff.
I know a lot of it is probably gear and your raid needs to down bosses to get gear but – if you can’t find a way to get the dps to step up now, you’re really really not going to like Alysrazor or, I hear, Ragnaros.
Or you could just wait for the nerfbat next week. Ugh, I was hoping to at least get TO Ragnaros before he got nerfed
I personally thing one should 2 heal those encounters you can. It makes you better healers. In FL progression, we currently 2h every encounter except beth, which helps alleviate boredom and prepare one for hard modes (if your group has that as an eventual goal).
It’s easy to look at it as ‘more work’, but honestly, I think it’s better to look at it as doing everything you can to reliably get the kill. In this tier especially, I think 2 heal should be the default, and you switch to three when your healers are unable to 2 heal the content (due to whatever reason).
If you have a shadow priest in your raid composition, 1 tanking is probably recommended as well.
It makse TWO of you better healers and one of you rusty.
I will add if you are bringing too many healers (ie: 3) then you should only use one tank. Two heal one tank is pretty standard setup for this encounter, so you’re actually losing 2 dps relative to how a lot of people kill it.
I disagree that 2 heals 1 tank is “standard”. I’ve seen it done, yes, but by people who have the encounter on farm. 3 heals 1 tank is a lot closer to standard from what I’ve read and with the recent change so that he never Decimation Blades first, really should be do-able with even a non-dodge tank.
FYI, if it’s useful, how my raid does it: Resto druid on the tank at first. Holy Pally builds stacks and the disc priest starts building stacks on the first crystal. I try to “snipe” a stack late in the first crystal to get 4-6 stacks just off the bat. After the first crystal, the disc priest swaps to the tank to help me. After the second crystal, the holly pally goes on the tank – and stays there. She usually has 80-120 stacks at this point.
I swap to crystals, and then the disc priest and I swap after every two crystals – I’m on raid for crystals 3 and 4, she’s on for 5 and 6. Toward the end we’re both just sort of healing everyone, tank and raid both, and it gets insane but we don’t usually lose anyone.
The key to this is the pally getting insane stacks right off the top, by having one dps take close to an entire crystal plus we blow heroism.
We do it with two tanks and three heals. We have some pretty wicked DPS though. I think I (on the low end for that fight) hover around 20k thanks to BM and my Devilsaur. I sometimes cheat a little by creeping away from the shard to get Baleroc out of my dead zone. It’s risky because if I move too far away, one of the melee might have the shard zip over to them… or a tank gets it.
If’ you’re Hunter reliant for DPS (i.e. have 1 or more in the 10 main raid), you might consider moving the boss back away from shards to open up the Hunter DPS – most don’t run BM so they’d lose a lot of DPS if they were in the shard chain.
So I know EtI’s healers hate the whole two healing. Team Heals has threatened walk outs, “mysterious lag” coinciding with heavy damage periods, and the like to keep the Tank Union on their side in the whole debate. I have to admit though, Team Heals’ attitude on it was a shock for me coming from my old guild. The group I ran with during WotLK saw reaching the point where they could two heal a fight as a sign of their accomplishment. All but one of our regular healers had a DPS off-spec and it was a source of pride for them when they could start rotating out healers into DPS rolls on the different fights. I know different people enjoy different aspects of the game, and I don’t intend this to be me weighing in on the question one way or the other, but it was definitely a culture shock the first time I heard how ardently you oppose 2-Healing.
I love it when we can two-heal, mostly cause I get to go shadow. I pride myself on being a good switch-hitter, able to dps or heal with equal skill (if not equal gear, stupid dps trinket lack).
Interesting story about 2 vs 3 heals. When my guild was working on heroic blood queen, we were 3 healing and wiping. I went shadow, and the next attempt was a kill. We needed that bit of extra damage far more than we needed the heals.
Now if you’ve got 3 healers who are passionate about wanting to heal and only heal, well, then you have a problem. I’d probably just go with 3 healing until/unless the heal team voiced their boredom.
It’s pretty difficult right now because none of us have super-awesome offspec gear. We’re still pitifully grinding VP for our main spec.